The latest ArtCents Benefit Concert — part of a monthly Manhattan series that gives voice to emerging songwriters and helps kids in need — will celebrate songwriters Kait Kerrigan and Brian Lowdermilk Nov. 20 at The Triad.

Kerrigan (lyrics) and Lowdermilk (music) were awarded the 2006 Jonathan Larson Award. Their adaptation of Henry and Mudge, commissioned by TheaterworksUSA, will premiere Off-Broadway at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in December. Other New York productions include The Woman Upstairs and Wrong Number, both of which were featured in the New York Musical Theatre Festival (2004, 2005 respectively).

Their latest original musical, The Unauthorized Biography of Samantha Brown, has received a reading in the Artist's Showcase Reading Series at the 92nd Street Y, and was featured in the 2005 NAMT Songwriters Showcase. It most recently had a workshop at Manhattan Theatre Club directed by Chris Ashley.

They were awarded a 2004-2005 Jonathan Larson Fellowship at the Dramatists Guild, and they are members of the BMI Musical Theatre Workshop.

The Triad is on New York's Upper West Side at 158 W. 72nd St. The concert begins at 7 PM and admission is your spare change — "by the jar, by the bag, as much as you can scrape together."

There is also a two-drink minimum. Reservations can be made by calling (212) 706-1516 or by email at tickets@createsomethinggood.org.

All proceeds from the concert benefit ASTEP. Visit www.createsomethinggood.org to learn more.

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Artists Striving To End Poverty (ASTEP) is a non-profit organization which mobilizes the global community of artists to create positive change for young people in need worldwide. ASTEP currently hosts arts based programming in which teaching artists immerse themselves in these areas, and through the universal language of art they educate youth on issues ranging from self-empowerment and racism to AIDS awareness.

Currently ASTEP artists from the dance, drama and music worlds serve as teachers, mentors, and arts advocates to children in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, Homestead, FL, Southern India, and the hospitals of New York City. ArtCents was founded in an effort to create more substantial community awareness, artistic involvement, and fundraising for ASTEP. For the month of August, ASTEP asks working arts professional on and Off Broadway — including the companies of Altar Boyz, Jersey Boys, The Color Purple, Company, The Wedding Singer, Carnegie Hall, Avenue Q, The Producers, The Juilliard School, Spelling Bee and the Urban Bush Women Dance Company — to deposit their spare change in donation to ASTEP.

In celebration of ArtCents and all participating artists, ASTEP will present the ongoing ArtCents Concert Series which will spotlight emerging songwriters and will include performances by some of Broadway's best. The concerts are proudly hosted by the Triad Theatre on the third Monday of each month and admission to these concerts is spare change. With ArtCents, ASTEP endeavors to prove that within the art community "Small Change indeed makes Big Change."